


i miss you more than i thought i would

by timetoboldlygo



Series: bodhicassian week [3]
Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: M/M, Reincarnation, kind of, this was sadder than i intended but is technically a very happy ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-21
Updated: 2017-06-21
Packaged: 2018-11-16 19:41:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,623
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11259633
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/timetoboldlygo/pseuds/timetoboldlygo
Summary: bodhi rook didn't know what all those memories from another universe are, but he could only chalk them up to very imaginative dreams. he was an engineering student, not a spaceship pilot in some weird other universe. but the man he bumps into on the street certainly seems to know him. certainly seems to be one cassian andor.





	i miss you more than i thought i would

**Author's Note:**

> written for bodhicassian week! happy endings! i didn't reread this at all, but really enjoyed writing it and i kind of want to expand it, actually?

Bodhi dreamed, sometimes. He called them memories, but of course they weren’t memories, no matter how real they felt. No matter how the details of it all – his childhood on Jedha, joining the Imperial army, defecting. He could recall it all so clearly that he must have lived it. But that was stupid. He was twenty-five and a mechanic, he had never been in some intergalactic battle between good and evil. He was just a tired engineering student.

Oh, but sometimes he wished. It felt so real. The beach on Scarif, the sand. Death.

He thought maybe that was what made him so lonely. “You’re always so caught up in your head, Bodhi,” his mother would say, smoothing his hair back. He kept it long, like he had in the dreams.

Stupid.

It was cloudy the day everything changed. It had been threatening to rain all day. Bodhi loved this kind of weather. It always felt a little magical, like anything could happen. Bodhi liked that. He was looking up at the sky when he ran into someone, dropping his phone and his textbook and causing them to drop their coffee.

“Oh, fuck,” Bodhi said, immediately dropping down to pick everything up. “I’m so sorry – I wasn’t looking where I was going, I was looking at the sky-”

Then he looked up.

“ _Cassian_?” Bodhi blurted, stupidly, because obviously this wasn’t Cassian, because Cassian Andor, rebel captain, only existed in Bodhi’s imagination. This man looked like him, with brown eyes and a sharp, handsome face, and a solemn expression, but it couldn’t be.

This man looked just as shocked. Then he said, “Bodhi? Bodhi Rook?” Bodhi’s mouth dropped open. He was certain he’d never met this man before, not in real life, but the man undoubtedly knew him. “From Jedha?”

Jedha. A place that didn’t exist in this world. A city that had been razed to the ground in dreams, memories, another life. It was clear that Cassian shared his dreams. Or his memories. Whatever that world was that Bodhi so often lived in, Cassian lived there too.

“From Jedha,” Bodhi said. “Uh. That’s me.” He bit his lip. “Maybe we should, um. Get some coffee. Talk?”

Cassian looked down at his spilled coffee on the ground. “Sure,” he said, shoving his hands into pockets. “Sounds great.”

\-------

Cassian got coffee. Bodhi  got tea. And they sat across from each other for roughly six minutes before Cassian broke the silence and said, “So you dream?”

“I guess so,” Bodhi said, relieved that Cassian had been the first to step forward. Bodhi never would have. He was too scared. He curled his hands around his cup of tea. Even in the memories, he hadn’t known Cassian very well. A few days, at most.  “You – also? Know me? From dreams?”

Cassian was studying Bodhi. His hair was a little bit shorter here, he looked a little bit younger, but he was the same. “I guess so,” he said. “Bodhi Rook. Cargo pilot. From Jedha.”

“Well, I’m an engineering student now,” Bodhi said. A faint trace of a smile appeared on Cassian’s face. “But. Yes.” He didn’t know what this meant. “I never – I mean I always thought I was just a really imaginative child, I didn’t think this was – ” he faltered. Real still didn’t seem like the right word.

“I didn’t think anyone would share it,” Cassian agreed. “It always felt real but – ” he cut himself off with a bark of sharp laughter. “I didn’t expect this.”

“Do you think other people are out there?” Bodhi asked. “Jyn? Baze? Chirrut?”

Cassian considered. “It would make sense if they were. But I’ve never met them.”

“So it’s just us,” Bodhi said. He was okay with that. Just to know that someone else out there could understand this. It was stunningly relieving to know.

Outside, it started to rain.

\------------

They spent a solid forty-five minutes talking before Bodhi had to leave or he wouldn’t make his study group. He learned that Cassian was in law school at a nearby university. He learned that Cassian had a cat. He learned that Cassian had been born in a town about an hour away and that his parents were still alive and that he had two little sisters now.

In return, Bodhi told Cassian about his classes, how he worked as a mechanic to put himself through college, how he had never been very good at hiding the peculiar memory thing, how it was just him and his father and had been for his entire life.

And he gave Cassian his number. It felt stupidly similar to giving his number to the cute boy who sat next to Bodhi in one of his classes, but the difference that Bodhi cared a whole lot more if Cassian, no matter how cute the guy from class was.

Besides, Cassian had a nice smile too. _And_ Cassian had texted him by the time he got home a few hours later, whereas the boy from class hadn’t texted once yet. He wanted to get lunch sometime. And Bodhi couldn’t stop himself from smiling at the text message even though he knew it wasn’t a date. The addition of food was only there so it would be less awkward.

Bodhi couldn’t tell if he felt so stupid and teenage-like because he’d never met anyone else from his dreams or because Cassian was just that magnetic, that attractive. To have Cassian’s gaze on him made Bodhi feel important.

\-----------------

It was _easy_ to fall into a friendship with Cassian. Bodhi had never had a hard time making friends, but he felt like it was hard to get close to them when he so much in his head all the time. But Cassian coaxed him out. For drinks, for movies, for late night study sessions in Cassian’s apartment, with his little cat Muffin – “Muffin?” Bodhi had asked, and Cassian had grinned at him. “Really?” – winding around their legs.

It was so fucking easy Bodhi forgot to be scared.  Scared of what his past – his dreams – his memories? – meant, scared of what that meant for them, scared of what he’d done in the those dreams or memories or _whatever_ they were

He forgot to be scared right until it was summer and they were free and Cassian had driven them to trivia night at a local park and he was wearing a crisp white shirt in the summer air and he looked _so_ beautiful when he was carefree. Bodhi was talking about getting ice cream afterwards, because they were sure to lose, and he was happy and he forgot to be scared until Cassian turned to him right there on the street and kissed him, like he’d never been kissed before, like the world would end if he didn’t.

Bodhi kissed back, of course, wrapped his arms around Cassian’s neck and ignored the rest of the world. It wasn’t until they broke apart, Bodhi gasping, that Bodhi said, “Wait, is this a _date_?”

Cassian looked highly amused. “They’ve been dates for a while.”

“I think you’re supposed to tell me these things,” Bodhi said faintly because _what was he doing_?

Cassian could have – _should have_ – been offended, but he understood Bodhi, always had, so he took Bodhi by the arm and helped him sit down on the curb. “Tell me,” he said quietly.

“I don’t want to be stuck in the past,” Bodhi blurted. It was a fear he’d never been able to voice before because no one would ever have been able to understand it, not the way Cassian would. And in some ways, he’d never realize how deep a fear it really was, because before he’d been okay to live with one foot in that world, but now that he had Cassian, he didn’t know if he could do it.

Ironic that the one thing he wanted to stay in _this_ world for was someone he only fell in love with because of that other world.

“This isn’t the past,” Cassian said. “Or the dreams or the memories or whatever it is. We don’t have to live there, Bodhi. We can be here.” He swept his arm, encompassing the park and the street and the passing people.

“I don’t want to be stuck.”

“This isn’t stuck,” Cassian reassured him. “We may have met because of that, but we’re moving forward. Together.” And oh, it that wasn’t exactly what Bodhi needed to hear. That Cassian wouldn’t let them stay put, living a half-life.

“I think it’s very unfair that you always know exactly the right thing to say,” Bodhi accused, but his hand found Cassian’s and Cassian smiled as he took it.

“It’s a gift,” he said, trying to be serious. Bodhi reached out, carefully, and touched Cassian’s lips, which smiled before Bodhi replaced his fingertips with his own lips.

Sitting there in the sun – Cassian’s hand on his, his hand on Cassian’s waist, Cassian’s lips on his – was so _nice_. Real. Bodhi hadn’t really felt like this before, never had someone who some completely understood him, who knew the deepest parts of him.

“Do you think,” Bodhi said haltingly, and felt Cassian’s magnetic gaze land on him. “This is a second chance?”

“A second chance?”

“I guess it’s silly,” Bodhi mumbled, looking back at the park across the street. But he had to share this. “But maybe – we died but we didn’t deserve to.”

“So we live again,” Cassian said. His hand tightened on Bodhi’s, even as he looked at Bodhi, eyes bright. “I can think of worse things.”

Bodhi loved many things in this world. The smell of rain, the moment when something broken was fixed again, the feeling of sun on his face. Cassian by his side.


End file.
